A few days after I received my PlayStation Vita review unit in the mail, I got a set of six plastic cards with boxy black and white patterns on them. The free "augmented reality" games that rely on those cards were made available for download on the PlayStation Network today, and while the games definitely take place on a backdrop of reality, I'm not really sure how much the real world is being "augmented" through the Vita.

In the strictest sense, I suppose playing a Vita augmented reality game on my coffee table does make that table "greater in size or value" (as the old Google box defines the word "augmented"). I mean, my coffee table didn't previously have little soccer players that I could move around with a flick of my finger, and now it appears to, on the Vita screen. That's probably an improvement. But this kind of augmentation treats the real world more as an easy-to-ignore background rather than a vibrant reality that's being meaningfully impacted by the game.

In all three of the augmented reality games currently available on the PlayStation Store, my coffee table is just another flat surface to project a game on top of. The important elements of reality on that table, like a stack of magazines or a PlayStation 3 controller, are totally meaningless as long as the crucial cards aren't obstructed from view. Reality, in this case, is merely a pleasant backdrop for games that could just as easily take place in front of a white curtain. Compare this to a Kinect title like Double Fine Happy Action Theatre, where everything from balloons to falling snow will land and bounce realistically on surfaces in your living room, adding a bit of depth to the on-screen illusion that your environment has really been transformed.

The only real feature the Vita's augmented reality games can claim over their traditional counterparts comes in the form of simplified camera control. Rather than futzing with buttons or analog sticks to get the exact right view of the action, you can simply move and twist the Vita in, out and around the scene until you've got the desired viewpoint. You have to be careful, though, because if you lose sight of those all important cards for too long, the game itself is replaced with a frustrating "out of range" message until you fix your positioning. The end result is that you'll tend to play these games while holding the Vita stiffly out in front of you, afraid that a slight change in position will make the scene distractingly wobbly or unacceptable to the augmented reality gods.

That's all right, though, because the simple games on offer so far don't really require complex camera positioning anyway. Cliff Diver is a simple, rhythm-based button-matcher that you could practically play blindfolded if the audio cues were slightly better. In Table Soccer, an overhead, full-field view is the only one you'll need while passing the ball between players that are oddly frozen in place unless you actively flick them around. Fireworks makes the best use of the augmented camera by occasionally making you twist the system to track down an errant mid-air explosion, but the simple, tap-in-time gameplay still gets old pretty fast.

There is hope for the concept of augmented reality on the Vita, I suppose. A trailer for Vita's augmented reality titles shows upcoming games like Pocket War, in which errant missiles appear to bounce off of oranges and coffee mugs sitting on the tabletop, and Pulsar, where you have to actively manipulate the AR cards in the real world to bounce a laser around obstacles. These titles, it seems, are at least treating reality as something tangible, rather than simply using a scene from the real world to try and spice up some otherwise uninspiring games.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl